This patch is the second iteration and overhaul for the HUD. It introduces most of the missing features, including tweaks for the capital ships HUD, a new planetary HUD, a revamp of the targetting indicators, a revamp of the ring radar, a warp tunnel helper to show the path to an objective and a bunch of other HUD tweaks.

Note that some features are experimental. Due to the high amount of HUD changes and tweaks, it is likely that this patch has introduced new bugs and will require further tweaking. Feedback is more than welcome so please let us know on the forums what you like or dislike with the new HUD features. Thank you !

-The I-Novae team

• Initial implementation for capital ship HUD and tweaks compared to small ships
  
• Armor / shield points are moved above speed bar and central information has been offset, to avoid covering the ship
  
• Removed hemispherical radar from capital ship HUD: since capital ships have a free rotating camera, the hemispherical radar wasn't as useful and was covering the ship. With this radar removed, the view is now clear

• A planetary HUD now pops up when approaching a planetary surface
  
• This planetary HUD displays a heading bar (plus the heading angle in degrees, compared to the north pole of the planet) and the pitch angle, compared to the horizon
  
• Moved altitude meter on the bottom left side of the heading bar

• Added an arrow at the HUD center to show the direction / angle of the currently selected target
  
• Added max target indicators limitation in combat vs navigation modes (+ slider in options menu). This is a major step towards decluttering in large battles
  
• Removed HUD cycling: the F3 key is now simply toggling on/off the entire HUD. The automatic vs manual HUD modes have been removed
  
• There is still a concept of combat versus navigation HUD. The simple difference between the two is whether you have a target selected or not. Without a target, you are in navigation mode and the HUD shows more target indicators
  
• The HUD switches to combat mode when you select a target. It then highlights only the highest priority targets
  
• Target selection (default key: G) is now taking into account priorities/threats as well as your ship type (ex.: a bomber will prioritize selecting capital ships, while an interceptor will prioritize enemy interceptors and bombers).

Note that the priority/threat formula is experimental and might need future tweaks.

• Updated ring radar to use the new arrow design. The ring radar shows all the combat mode targets (by default: the 5 highest priority targets)
  
• Added a slider in options menu to control radius / size of ring radar

• Added a navigation tunnel helper towards long-range objective in warp mode

Note that the tunnel display is experimental. In particular, at the moment it is straight. We are still working on generating a tunnel along an orbital curve to avoid planets / massive obstacles

• Added max weapon range info to HUD
  
• Increased font size for armor / shield hitpoints display
  
• Added cursor hovering to highlight targets and display their names (experimental)

• Strings localization update for German and Russian languages
  
• More tweaks to HUD color themes

This patch is the first iteration for the new HUD. It mostly focuses on small ships; while it also works for capital ships, it still needs multiple tweaks and improvements that will come in future iterations.

Also note that the targetting system (and the target indicators) and the planetary indicators will be revamped in the next iteration. The patch also introduces HUD color themes (you can change them in the general options menu) and adds support for Russial localization.





HUD changes are too numerous to list, but here are the main changes:

• The default color theme is now green (but you can also set it to blue or orange in the general options menu)
  
• The speed and energy bars have been redesigned and moved to the left side of the screen
  
• The right side of the screen is now reserved for the selected target's information. The information panel on the top-right corner of the screen has been removed. It'll be re-introduced later as a special target MFD
  
• The bottom-left center part of the screen now displays counter-measures (CM) and the overcharge mode (None, Engine, Weapons, Shields)
  
• The bottom center part of the screen is now showing your ship's armor and shield points are a percentage
  
• The bottom-right center part of the screen is displaying the heat percentage and the currently selected weapon and its ammo count
  
• A circle and locking status information is now displayed at the center of the screen when selected a missile / torpedo launcher (note: disabled for capital ships)

• Improved per-turret targetting selection: now takes into account distance, tries to minimize rotation angle, prioritizes the selected target and/or the incoming missile threat (for AMS)
  
• Increased hitpoints for most turrets (MK4 to MK7) as they got destroyed too quickly in big battles
  
• It is now possible to fire missiles even in heat overflow mode

• Fixed client crash bug when selecting a target far away with a missile launcher
  
• AMS / lasers no longer fire after engaging warp

• Increased width of system menu (to better fit longer localized strings)

This patch mainly aims at laying down the foundation to revamping the weapons groups / management system and introduces a number of important changes. On small ships (up to Corvette, included) weapons are now exclusive (you can only select one weapon group active at a time). On capital ships, it is possible to toggle automatic vs manual firing and aiming. The locking system for missiles / torpedoes has been updated to be less constraining (locks are acquired instantly so that you can fire as soon as you select a target). Finally, we updated the radial menus and assigned a new weapons selection contextual menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles). The goal of all these changes is to prepare for the upcoming HUD update.

• Weapon groups are now exclusive on small ships: for ex. selecting blasters will unselect guns
  
• Weapon groups on capital ships can now cycle between disabled, automatic and manual firing
  
• Revamped missile locking system and alerts. To fire a missile, just select the missile's weapon group and press fire. Locking is instant as long as the conditions are met (enough ammo, in range, not on cooldown etc..). The angle restriction has been rempoved
  
• Revamped HUD weapons list (now showing group ids, name and ammo as a bar)
  
• Reduced amount of heat generated by laser AMS by half
  
• Most weapons groups are now active by default on capital ships (default configuration: automatic)
  
• Cleaned up corvette groups: there's now only one group for kinetic guns and one for blasters
  
• Changed ordering of some groups on destroyer to go in increasing power

• Revamped keyboard input profile for weapon groups hotkeys (1-9 activates the matching weapon group, instead of ctrl 1-9). Note: ctrl 1-9 is now used to set the throttle.
  
• Chaffs have been moved to the middle mouse button instead of left-alt (for keyboard profiles)
  
• Removed "Secondary fire" and "Missile fire" input event
  
• Revamped radial menus: introduced the Flight mode menu (default: hold X on keyboard, which is the ex key for weapons)
  
• Cleaned up other radial menus and reduced their content so that they fit into 10 slots
  
• Moved the weapons radial menu to the right mouse button (for keyboard profiles)
  
• Radial menus now resize dynamically according to the amount of slots they contain (ex.: a 4 slots radial menu will look smaller than a 12-slots)
  
• Added an optional event to cycle through active weapon groups ( "CycleWeapons" ). Currently left unassigned by default

• Fixed music volume slider in audio options that required a game restart to take effect (it can now be changed on the fly)
  
• Fixed camera free-look not working when spectating / in kill-cam of a capital ship
  
• Fixed missiles/torpedoes still locking and tracking a target even when satefy lock is off

• Increased a bit AI probability to fire missiles/torpedoes
  
• Revamped AI to actively manage weapon groups in a smarter way. The AI now takes into account more parameters, such as heat (for ex. interceptors switch to blasters when kinetics are overheating), ammo depleted, damaged weapons, etc..
  They try to switch to the weapons with the best DPS according to their target.

In this image you can see the weapons group HUD update. For each weapon group, from left to right:

• Weapon group ID ( matching the number hotkey )
  
• Number of usable weapons ( not damaged, having ammo, not under cooldown ) over the total number of weapons in that group
  
• Name of the weapons in that group
  
• Brackets+asterisk if the weapons are automatic
  
• A bar showing the average amount of ammo for weapons in that group. Note that energy weapons ( blasters ) share their ammo together ( so the bars will be synced ). Kinetics use per-hardpoint ammo, so it's technically possible that some hardpoints have exhausted their ammo while others still have some ammo. The bar represents the average. The orange portion represents the ammo already exhausted. When the whole bar is orange, none of the weapons in the group have any ammo left.

It’s been quite a hectic few months since our Early Access release last October and we wanted to provide an update on what we’ll be doing as we progress through 2020 with an eye towards getting Infinity: Battlescape to “done” by the end of the year. Back in October we provided a roadmap of what we would be working on in the coming months. This was put together based on the deluge of feedback we were receiving at that time from players both old and new. Broadly speaking the feedback can be put in one of 2 categories:

1. The game needs more retention features such as missing gameplay, more ships, weapons, skins, unlockables, etc.
   
2. The game is too confusing, too difficult to learn, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.

From October to the end of the year we focused on bug fixing and implementing items from category #1. We hoped to have capital ship anti-missile systems (AMS) and a number of other features, including ship upgrades, finished by the time the Christmas sale began but unexpected issues kept popping up and we weren’t able to get it done until early January.

Once we released the AMS patch we took a look at what we wanted to do for 2020 and plotted a course that mostly consisted of working on category #1 retention features starting with the ship upgrade system. The reason for this is that, while our initial Early Access sales were quite healthy, the number of active players in the game has dropped precipitously and lack of players is currently one of our top complaints.

Over the last week or so, after talking to more players, it occurred to us that we may have tunnel vision. Most of the feedback we receive is from players who have already suffered through the learning curve and emerged victorious. After some conversations with people who struggled with the learning curve we decided that it represented a more immediate problem than ship upgrades, etc and decided we needed to shift our priorities.

What this means is that features such as ship upgrades, additional weapons, and weapon balancing will be deferred by a few months. Instead we will be focusing on the new HUD, AI, mission system, spawning, situational awareness, team communication, and the star map. It’s going to take some time to get everything polished up but our goal is to see a material increase in average players on our servers by the summer.

Your patience is greatly appreciated. We know we have something special here, we just need to properly nurture it as it grows into something we’re confident will be one of the best space combat experiences you can find.

Hey all, sorry for the time it took to release this patch. We encountered a lot of internal issues related to the AMS (aka. Anti-missiles/torpedoes/mines system) lasers implementation. Please keep in mind this is only a first implementation, and as such, until we get more player feedback, is likely to cause some balance issues. The patch also contains multiple bug fixes as usual.

• Initial implementation for AMS lasers for capital ships
  
• AMS are currently available on destroyers (4 hardpoints) and carrier (2 hardpoints). To promote the escort role of the destroyer, the cruiser currently does not have any AMS system
  
• AMS produce green-colored lasers that hit their target instantly and cause a very low amount of damage over time
  
• AMS lasers automatically target heavy missiles, torpedopes and mines within a 10 Km range. Since light missiles are no serious threat to a capital ship, they currently do not target light missiles
  
• Remember to enable the AMS systems in your ship's weapons radial menu (they're disabled by default)

• Introduced heavy missiles and renamed the old missiles to light missiles
  
• Light missiles are available on small ships (interceptor, bomber, corvette) and do the same amount of damage as before (150)
  
• Heavy missiles are available on capital ships and do more damage (500) but are less maneuverable than light missiles. They're still faster than torpedoes.
  
• Rebalanced missiles, torpedoes and mines hitpoints so that they're harder to kill
  
• Slight reduction in activation time for missiles, torpedoes and mines
  
• Reduced chaff activation range from 1.25 Km to 1.0 Km
  
• Removed chaffs from destroyers, as they now have AMS

• Target speed now resets to zero automatically after exiting warp
  
• Increased ramp-up / warmp-up propulsion factor
  
• Tweaks to missile detonation and distance calculation algorithm (sometimes missiles were exploding too far away from the target)

• Changed default font
  
• Fixed friendly fire warning while being on the spawn menu / star map
  
• Added a checkbox in the controls menu for automatic view reset
  
• Added effects quality setting to options menu

• Fixed options menu staying opened after clicking "apply" with settings asking for a restart
  
• Fixed invalid initial position of navigation cursor when entering the game due to accumulating mouse input on the splash screen
  
• Fixed /SetSkin server crash when player is on spawn menu
  
• Other minor coherency fixes / checks for player commands
  
• Fixed a bug that caused some input event groups to randomly stop working
  
• Fixed a bug with error correction that gets ignored when client receives server's tick before client validated its own
  
• Fixes and checks related to custom quality levels which were causing crashes, or weren't being take into account properly for smoke / damage effects
  
• Fixed lack of camera control in spectator and kill-cam mode
  
• Fixed rare server crash during corvette ammo resupply
  
• Fixed a bug that caused weapon muzzle sounds to sometimes originate from the actor center instead of the actual gun position

• Added eye tracker interface + experimental Tobii eye tracking support
  
• Added eye trackers selection list to the controls menu

• Updated many stations / modules layouts (some modules had gaps and holes)
  
• Added input profile for Logitech X-55
  
• Particle system culling now better takes into account per-particle size to calculate its bounds
  
• Slight Increase of brightness of space debris

Hey everybody,

Just a small update about the next patch for AMS (anti-missile/torpedo/mines system) lasers for capital ships. We've been working on it for a while and it's almost finished, but unfortunately due to the timing (winter sale starting on Steam and Christmas holidays) we decided to postpone the release of that patch (we didn't want to risk servers stability during the sale since the patch could potentially introduce a lot of new bugs) to the end of the year or early january.

Laser countermeasures, aka AMS, are currently installed on Destroyers and Carriers. Cruisers are already full of weapons, but will eventually receive them too. Once ship upgrades and custom loadouts are implemented, players will be able to select how many and where AMS are installed on their ships. Due to the energy requirements, AMS aren't available on smaller ships (which use chaffs as countermeasures instead). Lasers track and fire automatically once toggled and will cause a low amount of continuous damage on the targetted missile, torpedo or mine, causing it to explode after a few seconds. One of the reasons we couldn't finish the patch in time are the consequences to the game in terms of balance; as you can imagine, this can easily make the bomber and its torpedoes useless if not carefully adjusted. There's no doubt that it'll take a while and require many iterations before it's well balanced and we'll need a lot of feedback after the AMS patch is out.





We'll update the roadmap to reflect the new priorities right after the patch is available. Our next focus will be on ship upgrades, which is long overdue. In January we'll also work on sub-systems targetting, battle reports and the new scoring/ranking system, which should help with player retention.

Have a nice holiday and a merry Christmas !

-The I-Novae Studios team

Hey all, we’ve been talking for a while about the fact that we’re reworking our HUD and here is the culmination of that discussion for small ships. The HUD rework for capital ships is still in its infancy and will come later. We haven’t actually scheduled the implementation of the new HUD yet, at the earliest it probably won’t be until sometime in January, however we wanted to give you all a chance to provide your feedback. Our high level design goals are the following:

1. Make the HUD less cluttered
   
2. Massive space battles have a lot going on, how do we condense all that information and prioritize it in a way that makes the most relevant bits easily accessible for newer players
   
3. We want to make the HUD highly customizable for veteran players who have very particular play styles and preferences
   
4. Fix our abysmal missile UX

We took a lot of inspiration from modern fighter jets as the companies that build them have spent millions of dollars on UX R&D and we felt it would be useful to leverage that as much as possible. Unfortunately, fighter pilots are paid to learn all of the HUD symbology for their respective aircraft and we can’t expect our players to do the same. Since accessibility is one of our goals we’re trying to walk a fine line between cramming lots of condensed information on the HUD with making it readily apparent to casual players what’s going on. To that end this will be a walk-through of various HUD states with a description of what we’re thinking. For starters, here’s our prototype new HUD while in the initial unpowered state:

Unpowered HUD


One of the problems we’ve been encountering with new players is that they don’t know their ship is unpowered when they spawn and therefore are quite confused about why they can’t move. The next issue they run into is not knowing how to turn the ship on, since they probably just quickly glossed over the keybinding graphic. To that end the HUD now makes the ships unpowered state in-your-face obvious along with what you need to do to power it on. Granted, press "p" to power up ship doesn’t do much for immersion but in this case we felt accessibility should take priority.

Central HUD without VMFD’s


Next up is your central HUD without virtual multi-function displays (VMFD). We’ll talk about VMFD’s next so keep that in the back of your mind for now. Our goal with the central HUD is to only display information that is absolutely critical to the operation of the spacecraft - stuff that you need to be made immediately aware of most or all of the time. On the left side of the HUD we have your speed information including your current speed, a progress bar for your current speed relative to your maximum speed, your current target speed in white, the minimum speed required to enter warp in purple, and hashmarks along the maximum speed progress bar to give you a reference point relative to maximum speed. You also have your aggregate shield health in blue along with an associated progress bar.

On the right side you have information about your current target. In this image no target is selected so we’ll get into the details of targeting a bit later. Along the bottom of the HUD you have general information about the state of your weapons and shields. This includes your currently selected weapon with ammunition state, your available countermeasures as well as their state, and your available energy.

A new concept we’ll be introducing, which I just mentioned, is that of “countermeasure state”. A problem many new players have is that they don’t know they’re supposed to release countermeasures when a missile is flying at them so they become easy pickings. To help alleviate this problem your flight computer will manage your countermeasures for you by default (AUTO). What this means is that when you have an incoming missile your flight computer will attempt to release countermeasures as it feels necessary to dodge the missile(s). You will of course be able to set countermeasures to manual mode and release them yourself if you so desire.

Virtual Multi-Function Display (VMFD) layout


As mentioned previously, the new HUD will introduce the concept of virtual multi-function displays (VMFD). In Infinity: Battlescape (I:B) your HUD is projected onto the visor of your helmet and the in-cockpit displays are for redundancy in case of system failure. The outer HUD surface area is split up into VMFD slots, each of which may optionally contain a “page” of information such as weapon configuration, various radar screens, additional target information, ship system health, the chat box, etc.

Assigning a VMFD page to a slot


Example of the HUD with a couple of placeholder VMFD pages


By hitting a special hot-key you will go into VMFD configuration mode where you can change which pages are assigned to the various VMFD slots. Some pages, such as the chat box and the bubble radar, are “double wide” pages and will take up 2 slots. These will come with some restrictions in their placement. By default, VMFD pages will be assigned based on whatever we think is the most sensible arrangement for new players however, you will be able to preconfigure your VMFD layout for each ship in the game options so that you don’t have to constantly mess with it every time you spawn into a new ship.

The HUD with an off-sight target


As I mentioned previously the right side of the central HUD will show information about your current target. This includes the pilot name, the ship type, the armor/health level (ARM), its aggregate shields, the distance between you and the target, as well as the relative velocity. One problem we’ve had in major space battles is that it’s hard to follow your target once they leave your field of view (FOV). Currently, a little dot around the central HUD gets highlighted to show you where you need to turn to follow your target. In a large battle the highlighted dot gets lost in a veritable ocean of dots and it’s nearly impossible to figure out how to find your target. With the new HUD we’ve removed the ring of dots and replace it with a simple arrow that points in the direction of your target.

Currently, I:B allows you to fire both blasters and guns at the same time. This is very confusing for new players as we have lead reticles for both weapons on the HUD. It’s also difficult to know when you should use one weapon vs the other or whether or not your target is in range. To resolve this problem we will restrict you to using a single weapon type at a time. In our original design blasters were not supposed to be only effective against shields. They were intended to do less overall damage in favor of no dependency on ammunition. We’re thinking about reverting blasters back to their original purpose, however we still want to have a specialized weapon for use against shields, it may just take a different form.

Basic Missile HUD


Missile Locked HUD


Another major area of focus is missiles. Currently, missiles are very awkward to use. You have to keep your targeting reticle over the enemy until you hear a bing sound and then you can fire. It just doesn’t work well. We’ll be completely revamping missiles with the new HUD update. For starters, since you can only have a single weapon type selected the HUD will display special missile symbology. The most noticeable is the giant circle that shows up in the central HUD. This circle simply means that a missile is selected, we may change other properties of the circle depending on the type of missile/torpedo selected however that’s still TBD. When a missile is selected there will still be a lead reticle in front of your target. For an optimal firing solution you will want to put that lead reticle in the center of the giant circle.

New “missile reloading” HUD symbology


Unlike the current implementation, you will be able to fire missiles the moment you lock a target. You will also be able to fire them as quickly as you can pull the trigger - with one exception. If a missile hardpoint is an internal launcher, as is usually the case, there will be a reload cooldown before the next missile becomes available. If all of your missile hardpoints are in a reloading state the HUD will show the Reloading message along with a timer until at least one missile becomes available. A number of players have expressed concern with missile spam. If missile spam becomes a significant problem after we introduce anti-missile systems and automatic countermeasures we’ll look at reducing the number of missiles that can be carried.

A mockup of the new HUD threat management system


Threat management while a target is locked


Another area where our current HUD is deficient is in threat management. This is an extremely tricky problem for us. Modern aircraft are more or less never in a situation where there are hundreds of friendly and enemy aircraft nearby. To detect threats they use something called a radar warning receiver (RWR) and a missile approach warning system (MAW). These systems classify threats based on whether or not an enemy is actively targeting you or if it’s a missile vs an aircraft. To help manage the chaos of a massive space battle our HUD will only display the 6 highest priority threats in the following order:

1. A missile is actively targeting you
   
2. A ship has you locked and has fired a missile at you
   
3. A ship has you locked
   
4. A nearby enemy radar contact
   
5. A nearby unknown radar contact

We will use sounds, symbology, and possibly color to show what type of contact it is. One or more VMFD pages with a larger, more detailed threat picture may also be implemented at a later date.

A mockup of the HUD during atmospheric flight


Last but not least the HUD will have special symbology while in atmospheric flight. Specifically, it will show a pitch ladder and a heading tape. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing how to do a heading tape for space flight but we have yet to come up with a good solution so, for now at least, a heading tape will only be available during atmospheric flight. Finally, we’ve changed the color of the HUD to a yellowish green color. We still want to make HUD colors configurable so we’re trying to keep the secondary colors to a limited, also configurable palette.

As you can see the new HUD will represent a significant overhaul of not only our existing HUD - but many of the aircraft systems. We hope the end result of this will be a cleaner design that is more accessible and less cluttered for new players while also being more powerful for veteran players. If you made it this far thank you for taking the time to read through all of this and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

A small patch with a bunch of HUD and star map fixes.

• Updated font for monospaced numbers ( curtesy of Pendrokar )
  
• Redesigned HUD central elements: removed text and icons; made the curved bars thinner and shorter
  
• Removed set throttle notifications
  
• If the selected target is behind a planet, an "Obstructed" notification will now appear on top of the target's indicator name

• Trade routes now show up on the star map rather than in the 3D viewport
  
• Fixed a bug with blinking icons on the star map when they were obstructed on the main HUD
  
• Trade routes are now team colored

This patch contains major architectural changes related to input events and key bindings. Control schemes can now be specified per ship, the Virtual Cursor navigation mode and Direct control schemes were unified, and new bindings were introduced for capital ships, allowing full rebinding of strafing keys. As a result, some of the bindings might be empty or no longer work properly. We implemented an automatic configuration upgrader so that players do not have to remake their input profiles, however due to the complexity of the changes it is possible that some events might have to be fixed or updated manually. If you do not use a custom configuration and run into trouble, we simply recommend pressing the "reset to defaults" button.

Note that we got ride of some obsolete profiles that were not working properly anyways: X52, X56 and T-Flight Hotas X. If you have a working, fully functional profile for one of these HOTAS, or some other not-officially-supported-yet HOTAS, do not hesitate to send us your config file so that we can include it in a future build, thank you !

• Increased torpedo count on bomber from 6 to 8
  
• Small reduction of death credits rewards to make it more challenging to keep a capital ship
  
• Haulers vertical thrust increase by 50% so that they can fly upwards on planets without engine overcharge

Some minor balance changes. Bombers should now be more threatening to capital ships as they won't have to resupply their torpedoes as often as before. Killing other ships will also be rewarded with a few less credits.

• Updated manual thrust flight model when overriding flight assist. The new model should be more responsive, especially when using analog inputs or controller arrows
  
• Fixed corner directions not having enough thrust when using using an 8-way arrow/hat for strafing
  
• Fixed the long-standing bug of overriding throttle manually in warp, which somehow slowed down the throttle

We discovered that the amount of manual thrust in the corner directions wasn't reaching 100% due to a bug, so we reworked the manual thrust physics so that it's more coherent and works as expected

• Introduced a hard-brake option in controls settings to specify if the brake key also overrides manual thrust/strafe. Default is on
  
• Fixed braking continuously starting / stopping at zero throttle / speed

This technically wasn't a bug, but a question of priority. When you're holding the brake key, but are still holding a manual thrust/strafe key, would you expect your ship to brake and ignore the manual thrust inputs ? We saw divided opinions on this subject, so we decided to add a setting for this behavior

• Revamped warp exit speed: it will now set the throttle to match the warp entry speed (instead of resetting the throttle to zero)

Before the change, the warp exit speed was always set to the minimum warp entry speed (ex.: 240 m/s on the interceptor) no matter what the real entry speed was. After the change, your ship will exit warp at the same speed it had when entering warp. Throttle will also be set to that value instead of zero

• Added more vertical thrust to haulers so that they can hover / take off more easily on planets without overcharging engines

• Fixed a major bug with key + axis combinations that made key combinations sometimes not work as expected

This was a major bug that caused key combinations conflicts. This should now be resolved

• Added support for tooltips and localization to input events. All events should now have a proper name and tooltip
  
• Added support for display order (sorting) for events and event groups. Categories should now make more sense and be more intuitive
  
• Improved key conflicts: they're now displayed as a warning underneath the corresponding input event entry in the keybindings menu
  
• A value bar appears for each event entry in the keybindings menu
  
• A value bar appears for each axis entry in the device calibration menu
  
• Cleaned up the key bindings menu (made the keys button larger, with a smaller font, and removed the event type as it is now usually mentionned in the event name)

These changes should make the keybindings menu cleaner and easier to work with. A small bar representing the current detected value should appear below every single keybinding, make it easy at a glance to see if keys/axes are properly detected. Conflicts will now appear below each input binding too, make it easier to see where the issues are located

• Unified events between Virtual Cursor navigation mode and Direct mode
  
• Introduced a Capital Ship mode with separate events / key bindings (it is now possible to use separate strafe keys)
  
• Removed many hardcoded keys / combinations in events. The automatic profile upgrader tries to keep the same configuration, but might need some tweaks, especially for capital ships bindings

All those changes should make it easier for players to figure out how control scheme works and how to rebind keys. In the previous version, the Virtual Cursor control scheme (which was the default) used "CursorX" and "CursorY" events, whereas most players tried to bind "ShipYaw" and "ShipPitch" which only works for Direct mode. This generated a lot of confusion and frustration and lead many people to thinking rebinding keys wasn't working properly. With better event names and events unification, this problem should now be solved

• Fixed major issues related to event values being polled in the physics step versus the UI thread, which caused mouse samples to get lost/ignored
  
• Fixed major issues related to mouse wheel. It is now properly treated as a relative axis with framerate independence
  
• Fixed a bug with changing mouse movement or wheel sensitivity in the controls settings which didn't apply the changes until restarting

Mouse wheel wasn't framerate independent, so it behaved differently if you had 30 fps versus if you had 300 fps. In general, mouse inputs weren't polled at the correct frequency so samples could be lost, resulting in erratic behaviors at high (100+ fps) framerates. Mouse sensivity settings changes weren't correctly applied

• Added new input event bindings: scan mode and mine launch
  
• Removed F4 key to cycle through control schemes. Control schemes can now be set per-ship in the controls settings menu
  
• Fixed view switching from cockpit to internal when changing control schemes
  
• Camera / head look now automatically resets after a delay, which can now be set via a slider in the control settings menu (default: 2 seconds)
  
• Introduced a camera absolute mode, in controls settings to specify if camera movement uses incremental values or resets the values for every event input
  
• Revamped colors in radial menus, to make the selection more obvious / stronger
  
• Fixed some ship movement inputs still being active in radial menus (ex.: you could move forward / backward while a radial menu was open)
  
• Removed obsolete profiles: X52, X56 and HotasX - we need replacements !

• It is no longer possible to spawn at a carrier in warp (if it had a very low warp speed)
  
• Fixed a carrier respawn bug which didn't check the proper respawn conditions (it was possible spawn at a carrier in movement)
  
• Fixed client crash when loading the game with an input profile that does not exist anymore (now defaults to Qwerty as expected)
  
• Fixed crash when finishing to send some text after getting disconnected from a server
  
• Fixed incorrect matching of spawn type when calculating team scores statistics
  
• Fixed static base credits generated by installations resulting in stale match endings

An annoying bug that resulted in credits being no longer resulted when there was a low amount of bases alive at the end of a match, resulting in a status-quo and no battles being spawned. It was then the responsability of the players to finish the match by destroying the remaining bases, but since there is no challenge it was just a chore. In this patch, battles should now be generated (although at a lower frequency) and result in an automatic match ending

• Fixed other ships's thruster effects still firing when their ship is powered down

• Reduced thickness of armor/speed curved bars on HUD and removed the text/status information
  
• Added random reactivity to AI ship powering back up after being powered down

AI ships that got powered down, powered back up almost instantly no matter the NPC's rank. Now it can take a few seconds for the NPC to react

A transition patch focused on fixing some of the remaining input key detection issues, mostly related to throttles. We're still working on events / control scheme unification but it requires writing a configuration file upgrader to ensure backwards compatiblity, which takes a lot of time. After events unification is done next week we'll re-focus back on content.

Also note that we've been stress testing a server from Nitrado for a few days. This server will be shut down before this week-end. If you want to experience massive AI battles, look for Glimmerfall or Hebellos in mid-match (up to 600 ships in battle, see screenshot !). Note that the goal of this test was testing the server technology; you'll still need a high/top-end client to experience these battles at a decent framerate.

• Revamped axis calibration and deleted the old automatic calibration model, which required the player to have his throttles set to idle before entering the options menu (otherwise behavior was janky)
  
• Introduced event types in input device calibration settings: auto, axis, throttle or button. To access these options, click on the "gear" icon next one of the four input devices. By default, calibration type is set to "automatic"
  
• Fixed throttle bug which reset to zero when reaching the max value
  
• Introduced automatic matching of input device by filtering their name from a default string. New players might no longer have to select / assign input devices manually on some of the preset profiles

• Fixed a server crash bug happening with a high amount of incoming connections